Center for Economic Analysis

We apply well-established approaches to measuring economic contributions and estimate that the IR-4 Project supports over 111 thousand domestic jobs with total annual payroll of $5.34 billion in 2021 dollars. When accounting for all sources of national income, the IR-4 Project is estimated to contribute $8.97 billion to annual gross domestic product, including direct and secondary effects, which measures how dollars are re-spent throughout the economy. Several channels of economic contribution go into these measures, including direct expenditures of the IR-4 Project, anticipated crop losses mitigated under each of the two IR-4 Programs, through Biopesticide Regulatory Support and through gaining EPA exemptions for pesticide use when few or no other options for pest management exists. Recognizing that benefits realized today come from over 50 years of IR-4 Project efforts, we show that we can attribute about seven jobs today for every $1,000 in annual public investment in the IR-4 Project.